IRAQ ACCUSES US COALITION OF DEADLY BAGHDAD ATTACK

▶ Senior Iran-backed militant killed in strike as Biden’s Secretary of State begins Middle East tour

Iraq has accused the US-led international coalition of being responsible for an air strike in Baghdad in which a senior member of an Iran-backed militia group was killed.

The attack on Thursday came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken began a tour of the Middle East. The strike on a base of the Popular Mobilisation

Forces in the east of the Iraqi capital killed three people and wounded several others, said Iraqi security officials. Other reports put the death toll at four.

Among those killed was Mushtaq Talib Al Siaidi, known as Abu Taqwa, the PMF’s deputy commander for Baghdad suburbs operations and a senior member of Al Nujaba militia, a group accused of attacking US troops in Iraq and Syria. “The Iraqi armed forces hold the forces of the international coalition responsible for this attack,” Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani’s office said.

The strike, has “undermined all understandings between the Iraqi armed forces and the International Coalition” military spokesman Maj Gen Yahya Rasool said.

Maj Gen Rasool described the strike – reportedly carried out by a drone – as “flagrant and alarming aggression on the sovereignty of Iraq”.

This was “no different from terrorist acts”, he said.

A US military official told the Reuters agency that the strike hit a vehicle with the intention of killing the militia leader.

Since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war, militias in Iraq have carried out more than 100 attacks on bases housing US troops in Iraq and Syria.

This is retaliation for US support for Israel in its war with Hamas, which is also backed by Iran. US retaliatory strikes have killed more than a dozen people in Iraq and Syria.

The US military has 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq.

The Baghdad strike came two days after the killing of Hamas’s deputy leader Saleh Al Arouri in a drone strike in Beirut.

Mr Blinken is due to visit Israel and other nations in the region.